Posted by Kimberly on December 20th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Scarlet Letters
I think, as others have pointed out, it’s the glamour aspect that, for me, is at the root of my problem with the newest Spears pregnancy. Jamie Lynn, with her privilege and her position, isn’t going to have the typical teen mom experience. There will be no uncomfortable trip to the local Birthright Association for ill-fitting, secondhand maternity clothes to drape across her burgeoning belly. No humiliating wait at the local welfare office for some overworked, undercompassionate civil servant to pick through the details of her life and offer her the barest amount of assistance possible to survive–along with thinly veiled judgments and scorn. There will never be a time when she’s overtired from working as much a she can while juggling a sick, screaming baby. There will never be a time that she’s tempted to cut the baby’s bottle with water to make the milk last longer because she’s nearly out and her cheque doesn’t come until next week.
Jamie Lynn is going to make teen pregangcy glamorous. She’ll look cute and stylish in her maternity clothes. Her baby won’t have battered handmedowns picked up at garage sales or donated by the local church association, it will have the best and the cutest of everything. There will be photoshoots and magazine spreads and a completely skewed and unrealistic presentation of this life.
Yes, she has to do it in the public eye. And yes, she has to put up with the fact that mothers like me are writing posts like this about her. And I’ll bet that that must be its own shade of awful. But somehow, I still feel like she’s less entitled to my support than the girls like Kayla, who unlike Miss Spears did not grow up with every advantage only to throw them all away.
I DO hold her to a higher a standard simply because I don’t know her, cannot invite her over, cannot show my daughter the realities of her situation versus what will be splashed across glossy, airbrushed magazine covers.
Update: Oh, and it looks like I was wrong on the whole baby daddy thing yesterday. Looks like Jamie Lynn and Casey have broken up. Shocking that. I mean, gosh, pregnant teens always stay together right? Just like Barbie and Ken.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 19th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Scarlet Letters
So, Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. Maybe it makes me a hypocrite, but my knee jerk reaction to this news was to block Zoey 101 from our TV lineup.
I’ve been trying to think about why that is, why I have a huge problem with my daughter looking up to this girl and making her a role model now that she’s fallen off her pedestal. It can’t be the single mother aspect; I am, after all, the champion of the concept that you don’t need a marriage license to sign a birth certificate. And unlike me, Jamie Lynn is apparently with her baby daddy and planning to stay that way. No sordid one night stands here, just two crazy kids in love.
And therein, I think, lies my problem: They’re kids. Sixteen year olds, to be exact. Sixteen year olds should not be looking for cars with child safety locks. Their “cool ride” should not be a Quinny. Sixteen year olds should be kids, they shouldn’t be raising them.
But it’s more than just sadness at a childhood curtailed that’s behind my reaction to Spears the Younger’s big news. I didn’t have this visceral feeling of disgust and judgment when I found out about Kayla’s pregnancy. In that situation, I was saddened and disappointed, but I didn’t judge Kayla for her choices or the consequences they’d brought into her life; I reached out, tracked down baby clothes for her, and let her know that I would be there to support her as she tried to figure this single mom thing out and do right by her son. So why do I feel angry and appalled that Jamie Lynn Spears finds herself in exactly the same situation?
Maybe because I don’t routinely invite Kayla into my livingroom, while Miss Spears visits as often as Diva Girl can arrange it. Maybe because Zoey 101 is a role model to young girls, and I feel cheated that Jamie Lynn completely betrayed that wholesome image she projects on television by making exactly the same mistake that thousands of other teenage girls make every year. Maybe because we have unreasonable expectations of our celebrities and expect them to be somehow more than human and above the sordid,mundane realities of life outside of reality television?
Possibly. All I know is that Zoey 101 has been expelled from this particular livingroom. Although, my money is it won’t be an issue since Zoey will more than likely be expelled from Nickelodeon post haste, their messages of support notwithstanding. I mean, can you imagine if they wrote it in?
And that makes me wonder, is it just that she’s on TV? If it were The Ladies beloved Teenage Babysitter, would I have have this same strong reaction? Would I still feel that she was no longer a fit role model for my children? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that she and Kayla are both “real” people with very little glamour attached to their lives while Jamie Lynn is a celebrity, but when I think of the two I know, I feel empathy and compassion, but when I think of the last one on the list, all I can muster is a dismissive disgust and the incredibly uncharitable sentiment that that the last thing I want as a role model for my daughter is a knocked up 16 year old. (Not that I was really keen on Zoey or Jamie Lynn as a role model under any circumstances, but this goes beyond my level of tolerance for seemingly harmless tweenie pop culture.)
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Posted by Kimberly on December 6th, 2007 — Posted in Zen Baby, Kipple, Scarlet Letters
“Yours can be the mum, Mummy, because you’re the Mum. And mine will be the baby because I’m the baby.”
We have a lot of books depicting all types of families, but the simple fact of the matter is, the overwhelming majority of children’s media promotes the traditional nuclear family concept: Mommy, Daddy, and Baby are clearly the main components of the family unit. One of the fun things about being part of a less than traditional family structure is watching how the standard taxonomy is often co-opted and manipulated to fit the experience of family the child understands, rather than those that are more commonly described. Regan has obviously internalized the accepted construct, but she’s clearly applying it according to her experience, in which family is a very female affair:
“And Bina’s can be the Daddy. You know, the girl daddy, because she’s a girl.”
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Posted by Kimberly on November 15th, 2007 — Posted in NaBloPoMo, Scarlet Letters
“We are a couple in our 30s looking for a baby to call our own. If you know of anyone looking for a home for their child, contact me at…”
I see ads like this from time to time, in the backs of magazines or sometimes in the classifieds section of the campus newspaper. I usually ignore them, save for a fleeting thought of how heartbreaking it must be to be reduced to running an ad in the want ads to complete your family. Today, however, I had not one ounce of sympathy to spare for the woman who wrote these words. I wasn’t indifferent, disinterested, and vaguely saddened when I came across this message; I was shocked, offended, and angry.
What’s so different about this ad? It was posted on a single mothers message board. Because of course a place where single moms gather to support each other as they raise their children alone is absolutely the best place to look for a new baby of your very own. Obviously, there must be a bunch to spare there, right?
This offends me on about 17 different levels. What’s most offensive about it though is that it’s not trying to be offensive. I’m sure that the woman who posted this is incredibly sincere and very probably a perfectly nice woman, albeit one with absolutely no sense of tact, common sense, or boundaries. Frankly, I find the whole idea that she thought it was appropriate or acceptable to solicit an adoption on a single mom messageboard mindboggling. How does one assume that invading an area meant for your diametrical opposite and then expecting them to not only welcome your presence but change their lifestyle to the benefit of yours is a good idea? It’s like going to a group of elimination communication devotees, offering them free diaper service, and expecting them to be genuinely enthusiastic about your offer.
There’s that same underlying assumption that we’re doing it all wrong. Coupled, of course, with the ever popular implication that we’re all a bunch of loose sluts. That we’ve gotten ourselves knocked up and now we’re looking for a way out of our troubles. It implies that our babies are disposable, that they’re a problem to be taken care of and she’s got the solution: Single moms have unwanted babies, infertile couples want babies, clearly it’s a win-win situation. It seems to say that single motherhood is a state to be avoided, and that we should be looking at alternatives to that state, even if that means not being mothers to our children at all. Of course, everyone would be so much better off this way–the baby would have two married parents, the married couple would finally be well on their way to nuclear status, and us? Well, we could go get on with our lives, of course, unencumbered by those pesky children that we didn’t really want anyway.
I realize that that seems like a fairly harsh judgment of a seemingly innocuous message, but there’s also context to consider here. This message not only appeared on a single mother’s messageboard, it appeared in response to this:
“I know that it has been done before and definately can be done and I know that it will NOT be easy by any means. Im just so afraid that I won’t be able to do it, that I’ll be miserable and lonely and depressed. Any feedback or similar stories or just anything would be a great help. I don’t know what to do.”
So, in response to a young woman seeking support and reassurance, this person offered to take her baby off her hands. If that’s not mercenary, I don’t know what is. Not to mention how insulting it is to every single mom who responded to this girl with support and encouragement.
I can’t even imagine the pain of infertility (no, seriously, I can’t. I mean, if I could, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this blog now would I?). It must be awful to so desperately want a child, and yet be denied that wish. And I would imagine that women like me, women who refuse to play by the rules, to things the “right” way, must seem like insult to injury. But that does not give women like this one the right to insult us, to use our safe place as a baby market, to negate everything about us in her quest to change this essential fact about herself.
We deal with those judgments every day. The questions about our “baby daddies,” the raised eyebrows when we confess our marital status–or, more specifically, our lack thereof–the assumptions that our lives must just be so. hard. without a husband to help us, that this can’t possibly be our choice…We don’t deserve to have that type of attitude, and the utter negation of our lifestyles that such a bald offer of adoption implies, brought to the place where we gather to seek support and share our stories with other women who “get it” any more than infertile women deserve to have their support networks tarnished by tactless questions about their family planning or an invaded by an army of single moms eager to hear about effective methods of birth control.
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Posted by Kimberly on October 25th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, Blah Blah Blog, Scarlet Letters, iVillage
This blog is called “Sanity and the Solo Mom” for a reason. Partly because it’s about me, raising The Ladies on my own. But mostly because when iVillage and I were coming up with the title, my one hard and fast, non-negotiable position was that it not be called the “single” anything. I hate, hate, hate the term “Single Mother.” Actually, I’m not wild about “single parent,” either.
Truth be told, I’m not wild about putting any sort of adjective in front of the word “parent.” I think that in a lot of ways, being a parent is a pretty universal experience that has less to do with your committment to a partner than with your committment to your children. And yet, we tend to qualify our parenting as though marital status makes a difference. If you are married, you are simply a parent, no questions asked. Unmarried, and you lumped into a complicated category called “single parent,” also often without any other explanation.
What, really, defines the single parent experience? Is it simply the absence of a wedding ring and someone who hogs the covers? What about divorced parents? Even though they were once simply parents, and often continue to share parenting responsibilities long after they cease sharing a phone number, the fact that they no longer share a bathroom labels them “single parents.” But, don’t two singles make a double?
Which is not to say that people who independently co-parent are not single parents, just that they aren’t the only type of single parent out there. There’s a whole other breed of single parents–a group who share their responsibilities with no one. There are no “every other weekend and half of summer vacation” breaks and no discussions about report cards or doctor’s appointments for these parents; they do it all, all the time, all on their own.
Recently, someone on the iVillage Single Mom’s message board suggested that these parents are “true” single parents. It understandably caused some controversy on the board, implying as it did that one single parent experience is more valid than the other. I don’t think one situation takes priority over the other, but I do think that they differ in some very important ways.
That’s why I chose to define myself as a “Solo Mom.” I think that if my experience has to be qualified, it more accurately describes my situation while respecting all those single parents out there. Because really, parents of all types deserve all the respect they can get.
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Posted by Kimberly on September 1st, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, Scarlet Letters, iVillage
Remember when I got a little defensive about my friend’s father getting bent out of shape over a flippant remark I made? Yeah. Well, seems like the shoe is on the other foot now.
This week I took an amazing PD course on Tribes. It was a truly great experience, both in what I took away from it and in the way it was run. You know how most training courses consist of you sitting there, bored to tears and doodling on your notepad while the course leader painstakingly reads you each and every overhead–all of which have been photocopied directly form the manual you were issued? This course was nothing like that. It was a practical, dynamic, hands on introduction to the Tribes philosophy and strategies. I left it engerized, inspired, and offended.
I know that the facilitator didn’t mean to offend me with her comments. I realize that she was just trying to break the ice and put everyone at ease. But still, I think her statement that, while we didn’t need to expose our deepest, most personal moments in our life maps, if we weren’t “ashamed of the third divorce or that illegitimate child” we should feel free to share. Everyone else laughed when she said it. Me? I cringed.
And then I asked myself, “Did she really just say illegitimate? Did she really just imply that having a child out of wedlock, in the year 2006, is something to be ashamed of???” Yeah. She did. Was I being oversensitive? Reading too much into what she had clearly meant as a lighthearted joke? Should I just keep my mouth shut, smile, and not make waves? Afterall, this was my workplace–a Catholic schoolboard no less.
Not bloody likely.
I refuse to be made to feel ashamed of being a parent; I refuse to apologize for the existence of my daughters. I’m very proud of my children, and, frankly, of my status as a solo mom. I don’t feel that my family is any less “legitimate” than any other family simply because its makeup is, shall we say, “nonnuclear.” I don’t like the implication that I should feel that way, which is really the underlying message of that “joke.”
And, from my children’s perspectives, in 2006 should your parents’ marital status really be one of the criteria on which your worth as a person is judged? What does which side of the blanket you were born on have to do with the content of your character? While slightly more PC than, oh, say, “Bastard,” “illegitmate” is still an offensive term, and should be confronted as such.
I didn’t make a scene, but I did take a quiet moment to let the facilitator know that I found her comment to be deeply offensive. She was mortified and deeply apologetic. She assured me that she won’t be making that particular joke anymore; I assured her that I didn’t believe she’d been intentionally offensive. So many people do, which is why I think it’s important to confront this sort of thougtlessness. To speak up, politely and with empathy, to invite people to question their language and the underlying attitudes that their word choices imply.
All in all, it was a positive conversation–one that acknowledged that every person has a story, and we need to be careful of devaluing those stories through thoughtless words that promote outdated attitudes that are best left back in the Nineteenth Century, not brought forward into the Twentyfirst.
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Posted by Kimberly on August 11th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, The Man I Didn't Marry, Scarlet Letters, iVillage
I inadvertently offended a friend’s father the other day. It absolutely wasn’t my intent to do so, and in fact I didn’t even realize I had until my friend mentioned it, but an offhand remark I made about my relationship to the state of matrimony left him deeply offended. While I’m sorry he interpreted my innocent comment to be a denigration of his 30 year marriage, I’m not sorry I made it. To be honest, I’d do the exact same thing again in similar circumstances.
What happened was this: We were having brunch and somehow the conversation turned to the question of why the third finger of the left hand is the wedding ring finger. My friend’s 13 year old daughter, knowing that my lint trap of a brain is chock full of useless knowledge, asked me to clear up the question. My flippant reply, “I don’t know. I try to know as little about marriage as possible,” was apparently seen as an attack on marriage in general, and a devaluing of his in particular.
Let me be clear here that I am not anti-marriage. I have nothing against marriage per se. In fact, I firmly believe that marriage is an institution should be open to anyone who wants to experience it. I just have absolutely no interest in experiencing it myself. And I’m a little sensitive about that.
You see, we may very well be living in the 21st century, and statistics might support the idea that there are a heck of a lot of solo moms out there, but our society is still programmed to assume that all women are either married, or want to be. For example, a moms board I belong to recently added a “Single Moms” section. The first post? A married woman inviting the other married ladies to discuss where they’d met their “dh,” the better to help all us old maids find our own Prince Charmings. Personally, I quite often get called “Mrs.” at parent-teacher conferences, the automatic assumption being that if I have a child, surely I must be married. I’ve endured my share of well meaning friends trying to set me up on blind dates, unwilling to believe that I’m single because I choose to be, not because I can’t find a man. I’ve heard joking comments about finding a rich husband to better support my children and, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t amused.
It’s not that I don’t respect my friend’s father’s choice to marry; it’s that I often don’t feel like my choice not to marry is given the same due. So, yeah, I guess I can be a bit defensive when it comes to the issue of marriage. And we all know what they say about a good offense, right?
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Posted by Kimberly on June 23rd, 2006 — Posted in Uncategorized, Kipple, Scarlet Letters, iVillage, Sanity and the Solo Mom
I didn’t expect to see the moving van this morning. I’ve known about the move for months, and I knew that today was the day, but even so, seeing the movers busily carrying items out of the house as we walked by on our way to school came as a shock. Suddenly, the reality that there would be no more Thursday playgroup meetings, no more keeping each other company during seemingly endless assemblies and school performances, no more playground playdates, it hit home. Susan is moving. Today.
They say that it takes a village to raise a child, but in this age of far flung relatives, overpacked schedules, and stranger danger, it often feels more like being stranded on a desert island. I’m very lucky in that I do have a village–a wonderful network of family and friends who provide both emotional and practical support. And for the past three years, Susan has been a very important part of my village. She’s one of the best moms I know. And not in the way that makes you feel like a bad mum in comparison. She’s an incredibly grounded woman, and it gives her a patience and empathy as a mother that I often envy. It allows her to communicate her high standards and expectations to her children in ways that make sense to them. However, she also yells at her kids sometimes, and occasionally contemplates her escape plan when the pressures of raising three small children just seem to be too much to bear. Knowing that even the best mums feel like that sometimes did a lot to make me feel better about my own failures as a supermom. In fact, knowing that even the best mums drop the ball sometimes inspires me to stop beating myself up over all those times I’ve failed to measure up, and just get on with the business of doing better.
We met on the first day of Senior Kindergarten. Sabrina was new to the school and after she was ushered inside by the woman I would come to know as the Kindergarten Mussilini, I was left standing alone in a corner of the playground as all the other mommies caught up after the summer apart. Susan came over and introduced herself. I didn’t know then how much I would like Susan or what an important part of my life she would become; I just knew that I was grateful to her for reaching out to me. Over the years she’s been a shoulder to cry on and a friend to laugh with as we work our way through this parenting journey as well as an invaluable support.
Susan is one of those rare people who possess a true generosity of spirit. When Regan was born, she organized a food shower and delivered over a week’s worth of homemade frozen dinners to my home. More than once when there was an unwieldly project to deliver or I was too sick to walk her, she’s picked Sabrina up and driven her to school, even though she lives across the street from it and I live out of area. And she genuinely listens to people when they talk to her. You never get the sense that she’s not truly present in the conversation; you do get the sense that she is honestly interested in you and in what you have to say. I am a better person for having had the gift of her friendship.
We’ve built a strong friendship based on mutual respect and understanding in spite of the fact that we are in some ways very different people. .Susan’s a fairly traditional woman while I’m…not. And she has a calm and soothing presence whereas I tend to be more voluable. It’s helped that for all their differences–she’s a stay-at home mom who’s been married for going on 15 years whereas I, in addition to parenting solo, have been out of the home for either school or work for Sabrina’s entire life–when you scratch the surface our lives have some fundamental similarities: Our older children are the same age and have been “best enemies” since kindergarten–on any given day they are either joined at the hip, or at each other’s throats. We had our last babies the same year–two little girls who would have gone to kindergarten together in a few years.
I knew I was going to miss her, but until I saw that truck this morning I didn’t realize how much I was going to miss her. I feel like my village just got smaller.
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Posted by Kimberly on April 14th, 2006 — Posted in The Ladies, The Agony and The Entropy, Kipple, Scarlet Letters, iVillage, Sanity and the Solo Mom
I’m trying to write this inaugural post, but it’s not going well. Sabrina, aka Diva Girl, is home from school today–with a bad case of vacation entitlement. And Regan, my Zen Baby, is on a nap strike. After all, if her seven year-old sister doesn’t have to sleep away the afternoon, then she’s certainly not going to submit to the indignity of it all. (This is much the same attitude she has towards diapers these days, but that’s a post for another time.)
(Excuse me while I go rescue Zen Baby from the spurting horror of the carpet steamer.)
When did this become my life? When did a trip to the laundryroom become an exercise in precision planning?
Well, pretty much the moment the stick turned blue, actually. This has always been my life. My life as a Mom, anyway. I have never, ever, parented with a partner. Like most solo moms, I get asked every once in a while–usually when it’s pouring down rain but we need to make a trip to the store for diapers with a disgruntled Diva Girl and an unZen Baby in tow, or similar circumstances–”How do you do it?”
And I don’t really know how to answer that. How do I do what? Parent? The same way you do, I would imagine. I make rules, break rules, hug my kids, shout at my kids, adore my daughters and am worn out by them. I change their diapers, kiss their boo-boos and do their laundry. I read to them, sing to them, play with them, and occasionally lock myself in the bathroom to escape from them. I really am just like you in so many ways.
That said, being a solo mom is so much more than being the only one there at the battle of the bedtime. We’ve all been there, single and partnered moms alike. And it’s not about having someone else to pick up the slack around the house. Although I’m sure that when you are used to that support and it is withdrawn, it must seem doubly hard to get those floors washed or the laundry folded. (Heck, I don’t remember the last time I folded the laundry.)
The real difference in being a solo mom is living with the knowledge that no one will ever love or be enthralled with your child as much as you are. I watch Zen Baby sing along to her favourite Doodlebops song or conquer the ladder up the slide. I watch Diva Girl mimic her Bella Dancerella DVD or listen to another gem drop out of her mouth. I live all those “Honey, look at what the baby’s doing!” moments knowing that I can share them with grandparents and friends and here on this blog, but they will never be meaningful in the same way. And that is one facet of what it is like to be a single parent. Probably the hardest one.
On the other hand, my Big Girl tells me she loves me, and that I’m the best mommy ever. Or my Little Girl gives me a wide sloppy kiss and simply beams at my attention. And I know that while I will always be the “bad cop” (Diva Girl has settled in to sulk on the couch as I write this, upset at being reprimanded one too many times for teasing her sister), I will never not be the favourite parent. After all, only I hold the keys to the ice cream.
Sure, there’s no one to work out the Really Big Stuff with — Catholic School or Public? Time-outs or Time-ins? Chocolate cake or brownies for breakfast? But there’s also no need to worry about anyone secondguessing or contradicting those choices once they’re made. For me, that’s where much of the “sanity” comes in. I don’t need to lose my mind over things like the kids still needing a bath when I get done work, or always being the one who has to remember the vaccination schedule and scrub the toilet. When there is no expectation that someone else could be doing those things, it’s far easier to just get on with doing them yourself. (Or, you know, putting them off until tomorrow in favour of curling up on the couch and watching Justice League with The Ladies.)
I love my kids. I make choices for them. I do it alone, and I do it happily. I accept that while they are loved by many people, they live in my heart, and my heart alone. And that is what it is like to be a solo mom.
Welcome to my blog. I’m really looking forward to talking to you. But right now I’m going to go check out the ominous silence from the playroom.
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